false 24 148 140 true 5684803 read 4 true 728799 currently-reading 4 true 728798 to-read 136 false 758121 recentlyread 3 false 2739190 dnf http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/71895230 A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice and Fire, #2) by George R.R. Martin
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/71005535 to: The City & The City (Hardcover) by China Miéville
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4 1/2, actually. Very clever and compelling noir sci fi political thriller set in an imaginary city (that somehow calls Sarajevo to mind) that is actually two--and possibly three--overlapping, or "crosshatched," cities. The greatest crime and taboo here is "breach," the crossing of boundaries physically, visually, or culturally. And the most feared enforcement is "Breach," a shadowy, Orwellian police force that exists between the cities. What starts out in the story as a murder investigation becomes much more. My only complaint, a minor one, is that Mieville doesn't ever explain the history or cause of "cleavage"--a nice, paradoxical, double word--and so it's hard to feel as horrified by "breach" as a reader of "1984" is of the power of Big Brother, say. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/61761058 to: Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work (Hardcover) by Matthew B. Crawford
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I probably need to write a whole essay on this book, itself a powerful essay on the dire straits we are (or should be, since our latest financial disaster) just realizing we're in, where the false dichotomy between intellectual and physical, or between the touted "knowledge-based" careers and devalued manual labor and trades, has degraded both white- and blue-collar work. I can't do the book justice here, in a few minutes' writing. But it's a timely and important statement. Anyone especially who labors in education-related jobs should read it--even if its academic language and philosophical themes make it a demanding read. Who in a college classroom hasn't looked out over the new faces at the beginning of term, many of them already bored, distracted (there is a phone vibrating in more than one pocket; a guy in the back row leans on his skateboard and keeps looking out the window), somewhat sullen, a little lost-looking, and wondered why they're all here anyway? It seems that the university degree has become the only path to their shining middle-class future; in high school computer skills have replaced home ec and shop class (these have been eliminated throughout the country) while the skilled trades are denigrated and outsourced to the global factories--supposedly. Except your plumbing can't be fixed online and your house can't be built offshore--not yet anyway; as soon as it's cost efficient WalMart will no doubt stock them.

Matthew Crawford is a U of Chicago-trained philosopher who splits his academic time with a motorcycle repair shop he owns in Richmond, VA. Some of the best parts of this book are his personal reminiscences and ruminations about the intellectual, aesthetic, and moral value of manual work--fixing bikes, of course, but also as a professional electrician and an amateur car and hot rod enthusiast. Though he spends only a little time talking about it, "Shop Class and Soulcraft" is clearly indebted to, or at least reminiscent of, Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," one of the most memorable books of my youth. (I should add, though, that I never rode or fixed motorcycles, have no interest in doing so now, and wasn't exactly the shop class sort--I was a bookworm and always bound for academia. But I don't believe that the invention of computers and globalism means that our entire population should now be channeled into "knowledge work.") ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/71005682 Exit Music (Paperback) by Ian Rankin
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/71005640 Blasted Heaths and Blessed Green: A Golfer's Pilgrimage to the Courses of Scotland (Hardcover) by James W. Finegan
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/68549209 to: A Killing Kindness: A Dalziel and Pascoe Novel (Dalziel & Pascoe Novel) by Reginald Hill
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]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/68548262 to: Agatha Raisin and the Haunted House (An Agatha Raisin Mystery #14) by M.C. Beaton
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Given the title, I guess I need to defend this one. No, it's not a "Goosebumps"; it's real adult reading. Very satisfying entertainment too: good English village mystery solved by the cranky and bumbling Agatha, a middle-aged (but still "sexy" from a Cotwolds cottagers' perspective) semi-retired PR exec who'd rather be investigating crimes than working in London. Beaton has as much fun with the amateur sleuth subgenre in these books as she does with the police procedural in her Hamish Macbeth books. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/65314890 to: Close Range : Wyoming Stories (Paperback) by Annie Proulx
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A rereading, but thought I'd share anyway. Powerful stories, not for the faint of heart or impatient, or for those who want "uplift." This is the new wild west, a place of bleak landscapes, isolation, unemployment, drunkenness and madness, where cattle ranching is dead or dying and the only "growth industries" are tourism and dude ranching. Though some of the stories are less effective than others, a few elevate this to five-star status ("The Half-Skinned Steer," "The Mud Below," "The Governors of Wyoming," "Brokeback Mountain"), and Proulx's writing word-for-word is never less than surprising and adventurous. ]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/66974448 Derek's review of When the Emperor Was Divine
by Julie Otsuka

"To Dan Brown," an essential new verb. But how do you define it? ]]>